An Egyptian Princess — Volume 06 eBook

“Through a trap-door, of which nobody knows
but myself, and which stood wide open waiting for
him. Everything turned out marvellously; I even
succeeded in getting hold of a dagger which Bartja
had lost while hunting, and in laying it under Nitetis’
window. In order to get rid of the prince during
these occurrences, and prevent him from meeting the
king or any one else who might be important as a witness,
I asked the Greek merchant Kolxus, who was then at
Babylon with a cargo of Milesian cloth, and who is
always willing to do me a favor, because I buy all
the woollen stuffs required for the harem of him,
to write a Greek letter, begging Bartja, in the name
of her he loved best, to come alone to the first station
outside the Euphrates gate at the rising of the Tistar-star.
But I had a misfortune with this letter, for the messenger
managed the matter clumsily. He declares that
he delivered the letter to Bartja; but there can be
no doubt that he gave it to some one else, probably
to Gaumata, and I was not a little dismayed to hear
that Bartja was sitting over the wine with his friends
on that very evening. Still what had been done
could not be undone, and I knew that the witness of
men like your father, Hystaslies, Croesus and Intaphernes,
would far outweigh anything that Darius, Gyges and
Araspes could say. The former would testify
against their friend, the latter for him. And
so at last everything went as I would have had it.
The young gentlemen are sentenced to death and Croesus,
who as usual, presumed to speak impertinently to the
king, will have lived his last hour by this time.
As to the Egyptian Princess, the secretary in chief
has just been commanded to draw up the following order.
Now listen and rejoice, my little dove! “’Nitetis,
the adulterous daughter of the King of Egypt, shall
be punished for her hideous crimes according to the
extreme rigor of the law, thus: She shall be
set astride upon an ass and led through the streets
of Babylon; and all men shall see that Cambyses knows
how to punish a king’s daughter, as severely
as his magistrates would punish the meanest beggar.

—­To Boges, chief of the eunuchs, is entrusted
the execution of this order.

By command of King Cambyses. Ariabignes, chief
of the Secretaries’

“I had scarcely placed these lines in the sleeve
of my robe, when the king’s mother, with her
garments rent, and led by Atossa, pressed hastily
into the hall. Weeping and lamentation followed;
cries, reproaches, curses, entreaties and prayers;
but the king remained firm, and I verily believe Kassandane
and Atossa would have been sent after Croesus and
Bartja into the other world, if fear of Cyrus’s
spirit had not prevented the son, even in this furious
rage, from laying hands on his father’s widow.
Kassandane, however, did not say one word for Nitetis.
She seems as fully convinced of her guilt as you
and I can be. Neither have we anything to fear
from the enamored Gaumata. I have hired three
men to give him a cool bath in the Euphrates, before
he gets back to Rhagae. Ah, ha! the fishes and
worms will have a jolly time!”